Speculation surrounding an alleged streaming music service from Apple came after its purchase of Lala in 2009, but now music industry insiders are claiming that Apple has "clarified" its plans and that it does not have plans for a streaming music service. The rationale? It doesn't want to undermine its position as the top destination for music downloading.
Find out what Apple is planning instead after the break.
We all shed a tear when music-streaming service Lala went down, and have been waiting to see what Apple would do with the recently purchased company ever since. Rumors have been swirling that Apple would skip over music and head straight for video streaming, but now, evidence is surfacing that Apple is in fact, allowing music streaming through a back door feature that utilizes MobileMe's iDisk.
iDisk allows you to store files in MobileMe's cloud, then access and share them from any computer, iPad, or iPhone; this includes music files. Within the release notes of the latest iDisk release, Apple says you can even "Play audio from your iDisk while using another app." Multitasking and streaming at the same time? Color me happy. But there is a restriction. Find out what it is after the break.
Last week, I mentioned that Apple was rumored to be purchasing 4-year-old music startup Lala, and now the deal is official. Lala scans users' hard drives and creates an online music library to match, making it easy for users to add songs to their libraries. You can also pay 10 cents for the rights to an unlimited stream of a song — so while a hard copy of the music won't live on your computer, you'll be able to listen to a song as much as you want from the web. The service shares some characteristics with Apple's iTunes, but because it's web based, it doesn't require you to download songs or sync playlists between devices.
According to one article about the acquisition, Apple isn't commenting on its future plans using the technology. Some are speculating that this could be bad news for current Lala users happy with the service's perks, such as being able to listen to the full-length version of any song before purchasing or the 25 free song credits with signup. But if Apple does choose to integrate Lala's technology, it could mean that your entire iTunes library will be available anywhere you can access the Internet — your computer, your smartphone, your iPod, even someone else's gadgets.
It's not rocket science that people love music, and they love it even more when they can listen to high-quality tracks for free online. If you thought 8tracks was a sweet site, head on over to Lala where you'll find over six million songs to play. The way it works is, you sign up for an account and create your own online playlist (which you can access from anywhere). You can then play any song or album once for free, purchase a web song for 10 cents (with unlimited online plays), or download the MP3 version for 79 cents.
If you upload your own tunes to Lala you can always have access to them and when you sign up, you get 50 free web songs with unlimited listens. The sound quality of the tunes is exceptional, and the interface is really clean and easy to use — you can even follow people like Twitter.
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